It is no mystery that I love to dance. Something I love about Africa is how big dancing is to the culture, including at church. Africans dance in church whether there is music or just clapping and it is a beautiful thing.
I want to dance in such a way that it makes others want to dance too. I want to be so passionate about and have so much fun doing it that it makes others want it too. When I dance, I stop thinking and I just let the music move me.
Many times people ask me, “Ruth, you have to teach me how to dance.” But how do you teach someone to stop thinking and trying so hard to do the steps and instead to just feel the music?
This analogy goes deeper.
Lately I have been learning about a big fear of mine. I am really scared of not being genuine or sincere. I think this is a big reason for my lack of crying because in my mind, if I cry all the time, how will I know when anything is meaningful? One time someone told me that they compared themselves to me often because it always seemed like I had things together. In turn, they felt like they couldn’t be honest with what was going on in their own lives because they would look like such a mess compared to me (maybe this was just how I interpreted it).
Whoa. If they only knew all the things that I kept bottled inside.
How did it get to this point? I am now so concerned about being ingenuine that I try really hard to keep all the mess inside and, as a result, I end up being ingenuine anyway!
But what if we are just honest with the mess that we have? What if letting out that raw honesty looks beautiful to God even if the people around us reject it, or worse, reject us? I am not saying we should just be emotional messes all the time, but I know that I certainly could let more out. What it really boils down to is control.
I like to be in control. I like having control of what people know about me or how deep I allow them to go. Maybe I even like people to think that I have it all together. But then I am left with this bottle inside of me that’s getting stuffed more and more and is bound to explode into something a whole lot worse.
But the beautiful thing is this. As I become more emotionally honest, my God is right there with me sharing the same emotions I feel. He is right there, covering me in grace. And get this: I am still the same person! My character is not changing because I am already rooted in the love of Christ—in the love of Someone who never changes.
The same is true with dancing. We think we look stupid if we don’t get the moves down and so we try so hard to get the steps just right. But then it looks rigid and fake and no one has fun that way. But if we give up trying to look perfect and face the fact that I just might look silly doing this, THEN we might just have some fun dancing. It takes time to get the moves down, but we have to learn to enjoy the process and allow others to see it too. And then the music can move you and make you feel beautiful.
